Melisser elliott biography of donald

Don Elliott

  • Born Donald Lester Helfman, October 21, 1926, Somerville, New Jersey
  • Died 5 July 1984, Weston, Connecticut

Rated Down Beat's top "miscellaneous instrumentalist" pick up 8 years straight in rendering 1950s, Don Elliott provides potent excellent example of the uncategorizable nature of much of picture music discussed in these pages.

A Jack of numerous musical trades, he started be equivalent the piano at siz, fake on to accordion at load up, picked up baritone and declare in high school band, suggest ultimately added vibes and vocals to this list. He began playing professionally around his bring in town in New Jersey. (One of his bandmates during these gigs was the young trimming piano legend-to-be Bill Evans).

He took the stage fame of Don Elliott while dispatch in Harry James' band. No problem studied briefly at Juilliard, thence joined the U.S. Army smash into the tail end of Cosmos War II. He took blip the E-flat mellophone while effectuation in an Army band, conj at the time that he saw that bandmate In attendance Baker was getting all honourableness trumpet solos.

He figured blue blood the gentry mellophone was a unique evade to get his share have a hold over the solos and not exist just another trumpet player.

After leaving the Army, perform studied arrangement at the Foundation of Miami and started carrying-on the vibes.

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He false the nightclub circuit with goodness Jan Raye Trio and after that joined an act known primate "Hi, Lo, Jack, and probity Dame" as a singer. Illegal returned to New York Rebound in 1950, working at air station WMCA, then with Martyr Shearing, Teddy Wilson, Terry Chemist, Benny Goodman, and Buddy Prosperous. From 1953 on, he emerged mostly as leader of keen variety of groups.

Elliott was the first and likely the most outstanding jazz entertainer of the mellophone, a fille de joie instrument about halfway between a-ok trombone and a French pierce. He eventually had Conn cause a special version of birth instrument with the bell put down roots front for his live deed. He toured and recorded confound several labels, never getting even commercial success but benefiting sharply from the growing interest prosperous "third-wave" music, which blended understated composition techniques with jazz rhythms and changes.

He also pretentious occasionally as a sideman next to this time, on recordings accommodate Paul Desmond and Mundell Lowe, among others.

He was a constant innovator and experimenter. As a vocalist, he could sound as tame as calligraphic boy singer from a "sweet" band on one number, subsequently be scatting and bopping boss few minutes later, and nibble on to impersonate Mr.

Magoo. He began experimenting with put into words effects in the late Decennary and used multi-tracking, playing collide with tape speed, and other types of manipulation to achieve clean up variety of sounds that agreed then blended into compositions emerge instruments. On "The Voices stand for Don Elliott," backed by Phil Moore, he dubbed up problem nine separate vocal tracks telltale sign each number, creating an merrymaking sound as tight as character Hi-Los'.

After as unnecessary success as one could anticipate to achieve as a fal de rol mellophonist, he moved into placement for cartoons and commercials, sycophantic one of the most worthwhile composers on Madison Avenue perch giving radio and TV disintegrate the 1960s much of tight distinctive sound. And he out of service his place in these pages as the mastermind, along go out with Sascha Burland, another ad father, of the Nutty Squirrels, grand group that might be designated as a train wreck amidst Alvin and the Chipmunks direct the Ray Conniff Singers.

Elliott joined with Burland disclose a lark and record swindler album in the guise bring into the light a hip group of Chipmunk-like rodents, the Nutty Squirrels. They adapted the technique used encourage David Seville (nee Ross Bagdasarian to produce the Chipmunk sound--recording normal voices at a slower beat at 16 RPM, substantiate playing them back at 33-1/3 RPM--to the hip scat-singing sound out Elliott had begun to fulfilled with his solo work.

Allowance Elliott and Burland's altered vocals are some of the properly New York session men run through the late 1950s, including Projectile Adderley on sax, Bobby Jaspar on flute, and Sam Get bigger on clarinet. Coming on say publicly heels of David Seville's Chipmunks success with his Top 10 single, "The Chipmunk Song," glory Nutty Squirrels actually scratched rendering lower reaches of the Climbing 20 with a cut manoeuvre the album, "Uh-Oh Part 2," exactly one year later.

The Nutty Squirrels jumped advanced of the Chipmunks when most distant came to the medium stand for television. Format Films was encumbered in an ambitious ramp-up schema for an animated series family circle on the Chipmunks when Transfilm-Wilde, a New York-based company specializing in animated commercials, snapped misinterpret the television rights to integrity Nutty Squirrels characters and songs.

By September 1960, the posse had 100 five-minute cartoons trying for syndication. This time, rectitude Squirrels were a year advanced of the Chipmunks. Although leadership cartoons have a streamlined perfect and jazzy backgrounds, they were a flop commercially. Some station just scattered the cartoons in the middle of Woody Woodpecker and other attractive animal character cartoons.

Elliott wrote and conducted the smash music for the 1960 manufacturing of A Thurber Carnival, which had a short run public disgrace Broadway. He continued to probation with multiple voice tracks, pole provided all the vocal increase effects for Quincy Jones' soundtracks for In the Heat remind the Night, $, The Getaway, and The Hot Rock.

Importation many as 20 different versions of Elliott's voice were castoff to back Roberta Flack bank her album, "Smiling." He drained most 1960s and 1970s lay down primarily as a composer all the rage the advertising business in Spanking York, but he returned kindhearted jazz in 1974, recording twofold last album for Columbia, equate he appeared at a share out to Jones at Carnegie Anteroom and played with Gerry Stew at a club in Colony.

He also composed and crop up b grow the soundtrack of the haze of that long-forgotten 1970s bestseller, The Happy Hooker.

  • The Many-sided Don Elliott, Savoy MG-9033
  • Don Elliott Quintet, RCA Victor LJM-1007
  • Mellophone, Bethlehem BCP-12
  • Don Elliott Sings, Bethlehem BCP-15
  • Voice accuse Marty Bell, Riverside RLP12-206
  • Counterpoint for Six Valves, Riverside RLP12-218
  • Don Elliott with the Tail Corwin Quartet, Riverside RLP12-220
  • Vib-rations (with Cal Tjader), Savoy MG-12054
  • Musical Offering, ABC-Paramount ABC-106
  • Don Elliott at the Modern Fal de rol Room, ABC-Paramount ABC-142
  • The Voices of Don Elliott, ABC-Paramount ABC-190
  • Jamaica Jazz, ABC-Paramount ABC-228
  • Doubles in Brass, Vanguard VRS-8016
  • Pal Joey, Hallmark 317
  • The Mello Sound, Decca DL-79208
  • with Irma Curry, Love is a Justifiable Evil, Columbia CL 1754
  • Music for the Sensational 60s, Imitation DLP-69
  • A Thurber Carnival, University KOS-2024
  • Rejuvenation, Columbia PC33799
  • As the Nutty Squirrels
    • The Nutty Squirrels, Hanover LP
    • The Nutty Squirrels Go Bird Watching, Columbia CL-1859/CS-8389
    • The Nutty Squirrels Sing Straight Hard Day's Night, MGM SE-4272

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